Picking the Bones

by Brian Hodge

  "The worst," he said, and remembered it all so clearly, because tonight felt the same way, with precious little difference between then and now. The lights were out and magic had reclaimed the night.

  "There's one!" She dropped his hand long enough to jab her finger at the western sky. "Did you see it?"

  He confessed that he hadn't.

  She took his hand again, hers warm against the November chill, and told him there would be plenty of others. "This shower tonight is supposed to be the best one in our lifetime, I heard on the news."

  "When I was a kid," he said, "my dad used to tell me that shooting stars were angels throwing down their cigarettes."

  She laughed. "That's such a dad-thing to make up." As he wondered if she wondered if she would ever have occasion to meet his father. "I didn't even know angels smoked."

  "They must," he told her. "It was on the art of a couple old album covers I had, so it's got to be true."

  They picked their way along with hesitant care, still half-blind to the night, the park rebuffed by the now-deadened streetlights and lamps that lined the curving walkways. As parks went, it was a humble place, if peaceful enough to pass a lazy afternoon. By day, it had enough playground equipment to keep a dozen kids occupied, and enough open meadow for two pick-up games of football, with enough running space left over for someone's Frisbee-catching dog.

  Tonight, though, it seemed immense, its borders limitlessly far, swallowed by the waiting dark. He suddenly felt much farther from home than they really were, barely a two-block walk from the condos where they lived. He in one building and she in another—it was a wonder they'd ever met at all.

  Could he even say he knew her? Not really, no more than you can say you know anyone you've seen mostly in passing for a couple of months. No more than you can know anyone with whom you've sat down the week before for not one, not two, but three coffees. He'd known her just enough to fantasize and hope.

  And when she'd first taken his hand a block earlier, he held it as though it were the answer to a prayer.

  Deep into the park by now, they spread the blanket and settled. She uncapped the thermos bottle she'd been carrying and poured them each a round of fresh cider, slow-warmed with spices on her stove. He swirled the first sip in his mouth, picked out the flavors of cinnamon and cloves and the applesweet distillate of a summer's worth of sunshine. If he kissed her now, she would taste exactly like this.

  Overhead, the sky stretched horizons-wide and came alive with flashfire.

  Would she mind? She couldn't be as innocent as she looked. Twice-married, twice-divorced, on her own for the first time in fifteen years—she'd been quite candid about it midway through last week's coffees, admitting how enormously happy she was with this renewed status. Although, later, he had wondered if her declaration hadn't been just for show. The stats could've been his own, give a year and take one marriage, and from where he sat the solitude still felt miserable.

  While overhead, the stars streaked and burned like magnesium flares.

  They came two, three, four per minute, sometimes in groups that appeared almost synchronized. They came arcing in from their own regions of space and immolated themselves into brilliant wakes of cold fire. The moon gave them little competition, not much more than a slivered crescent and, if you looked closely, a hulking shadow set against the infinite depths.

  You tried to hang onto the meteors but couldn't, no matter how earnest the attempt. They eluded, living and dying during eyeblinks, so you either saw them or you didn't. They came and went at the speed of thought, faster than words could warn. They winked in and out of the edges of vision, or blazed directly before you and still left you wanting more.

  They were everything that love should've felt like—and did, once—and were every bit as fleeting.

  When she nudged his arm, he was afraid she'd read his mind.

  "It looks like your father was right," she joked instead, pointing through the gloom, ahead and to the left.

  In the distance, somewhere between here and the unseen swingset, the orange glow of a cigarette made tiny firefly arcs—up, down, up again. Of the person who held it, dragged on it, he could see nothing.

  He hadn't given much thought to it, but supposed it wasn't realistic to expect that they could have been alone out here. If the two of them—office-workers, the both of them—were hardy enough to endure the chill, then anyone could do it. Meteor showers would always draw an audience.

  "When did he finally tell you the truth?" she asked.

  For a moment he didn't know what she was talking about. Then: "Who—my dad?"

  "About angels and cigarettes and falling stars. Or did he, ever?"

  "I think he just let me pick it up in the street."

  "I forgot—that was the preferred method of parenting back then."

  "At least it guaranteed a well-rounded education."

  "I don't think I asked last week," she said, "but are you? A parent?"

  He hesitated, had to. Hadn't wanted to get into this yet, maybe would've been just as happy to never get into it at all.

  "Not anymore," he said, and even though he'd tried not to let the words slip with too much gravity, out they came like leaden weights, and he could feel her stiffen beside him. Asking if she'd brought up something wrong, and of course it was wrong, it would always be wrong—in the right kind of world, no man would ever need to remind a woman that sometimes little girls drown on perfect spring days. In the right kind of world, no man would ever feel he had to absolve that woman of asking innocent questions that still cut like razors, nor hate himself for having to. He'd promised himself once that when the time came to date again, he would never use that emptied little bed, in the house where he no longer lived, as a ploy for sympathy.

  "I'm so sorry," she told him, and didn't turn away as so many others did, in embarrassment or awkwardness. Instead, beside him, she faced him and couldn't have been more direct about it, less than an arm's length away.

  In the night, she could have been fifteen or forty. Her mouth looked full and dark and serious against the paler skin, and her hair fell no farther than her jawline. Last week, over their coffees, he'd glimpsed the photo on her driver's license, the longer hair, and was reminded that women often seemed prone to doing this after a divorce, cutting their hair in the same atavistic way that men once did, in some cultures, to mourn the deaths of those closest to them. He'd wondered if he would ever see it long again, if he could be the one for whom she might regrow it.

  "Did your daughter ever ask about…?" She aimed her finger skyward, where, as if on cue, a streak of light seared greenish-white. Seeing, he would've bet, if she couldn't ferret out some like-father-like-son connection, if he'd taken the same quiet glee in lying to the gullible.

  "No. I don't think she ever saw one. And I never thought to wake her up any of the times she might've. It was always so late." He smiled, or tried to, at this other home, that other life. "Once or twice I almost did. But I only ended up standing in the doorway. Watching her sleep. It's so hard to wake them in the middle of the night like that. You just want to leave them right where they are and hope that nothing ever changes."

  She smoothed her hand along his knee. "You're messing with Nature then."

  "Yeah, but it's not like the cruel bitch doesn't do enough messing with us, is it?" He tried shrugging it off. "What about you? So far I don't think I've heard you mention anyone more dependent than a tankful of fish."

  She shook her head. "There are so so so many ways that would've been so wrong." A single firm pat on his knee, as bold as the period at the end of a sentence. "Next topic."

  In the silence that came between them then, he could hear a sigh breathed somewhere behind their blanket, a drawn-out sound of contentment or maybe some early stage of pleasure. More unseen neighbors in the outer dark, and now he made it a point to attune himself to these scattered presences, to gauge how alone the two of them really weren't out here tonight.

  From somewh
ere off to the right, a soft, low rumble of laughter.

  Ahead, the footsteps of latecomers, more than two, maybe more than four, then the snap of what might've been another blanket being opened to spread upon the ground. He could hear them settle onto it with a great rustling of cloth and rearranging of limbs.

  "There goes the neighborhood," she whispered.

  "Or here it comes," he said, because even if he could see them, how many of his neighbors did he know—she too, for that matter?

  Both of them were recent arrivals in a place where the greatest challenge was simply knowing who lived above your own ceiling, let alone in the next building over. You might see them coming or going, but very often it was at too great a distance to speak, even if you actually had something to say. You might wonder why one limped, or what oddly shaped item another could be carrying beneath her coat, but these weren't the things to ask of total strangers. See enough solitary lights burning in the middle of the night, enough indistinct forms silhouetted at a window, and there were times when you couldn't help but wonder if it was your having noticed them that caused them to turn so suddenly, then disappear.

  It had seemed the perfect place to lose himself, then find himself again, because what was he if not one of them—furtive and indistinct? All it had taken was losing everything that had given him grounding, that had made him feel real.

  "They're not really stars, you know," she said, her face turned skyward again.

  "You sound disappointed about that."

  "I still remember what a lie it felt like when I first learned. The terms you hear when you're little—'shooting star, falling star'—you take them so literally. And then to find out they're not…"

  For him, it had always been one of those things that was a bit too far out of reach to completely grasp: that ancient pebbles and specks of dust could drop in from out of an airless vacuum and burn brighter than distant suns. But they did. Even if it was only a trick of perspective, even if they couldn't sustain it, for a moment or two they shone like stars.

  "Who would've thought," she said, "that garbage could be so beautiful?"

  She was correct in her labeling, of course. If this same debris now flaming overhead were instead strewn across the kitchen floor, you would only reach for the broom and dustpan. Just the same, it pained him a little to hear it so degraded.

  We are made of star-stuff—how many times had he heard this over the years? The phrase had always inspired in him a feeling of connection…although look how far he was stranded from all those distant cousins. They could be ages-dead before their light ever reached him.

  From the darkness behind the blanket, the sighs continued, then turned to something deeper, more frantic.

  "Okay," she whispered to him. "That's really starting to get noticeable. Are they doing what I think they are?"

  There was no other conclusion to come to. Nothing else sounded quite like two people making love…

  "Do you, um, want to move?"

  …unless it was four of them. Or more.

  "Not unless you do." She appeared to not give it much thought. "I mean, you usually have to rent a video to hear a soundtrack like that."

  But was she growing as aware of it as he was? The sounds were no longer coming solely from behind them, but were arising from the front and sides as well, all breath and groans and the urgent soft slaps of skin on skin.

  As he watched, listened, the night seemed divided into distinct realms, with the celestial show a domed canopy above this meadow and its earthbound longings. As for who each partner was, and what he or she was doing out there upon their cloaked patches of ground, imagination had to suffice…

  …until a car rounded a streetcorner near the edge of the park and sent its dual beam of headlights sweeping across the grounds. He dared not blink, transfixed by the sights revealed, their silhouettes backlit for an instant before the searchlight arc swept on to reveal more, and then just as quickly the light was gone and the images remained seared into his eyes as though he'd stared into the sun.

  Had he really seen a man standing and clutching his partner to him upside-down, her thighs clenched around his shoulders as she dangled along the length of his body?

  Had he really seen a small group holding someone else aloft in a cradle of their arms while another thrust away between the outstretched legs?

  Had he really seen a dozen or more pairs of upraised and parted knees?

  He had. And could only guess what was going on beyond the reach of that brief light. The only thing that he couldn't understand was why here, why now—if they'd all come out with rutting on their minds already, or if something intrinsic to this particular night and sky had driven them to it.

  When younger, he used to fantasize about orgies. And still did, he supposed, but as the years passed, his chances of ever taking part in one seemed less and less likely. This, tonight? It should've been arousing—even inviting—but instead he found something disturbing about it. The acts may have been all he'd imagined, but the circumstances were all wrong. For god's sake, the air was frosty enough to freeze your breath.

  "I don't know what made me think of this," she said, then with an easy laugh interrupted herself. "Well, that's a lie, of course I do, it's going to be obvious." At least she didn't sound embarrassed. "When we were teenagers, my girlfriends and I would get together every Fourth of July to drink and watch the fireworks. You know the kind that blow up and then there are all these squiggly things twisting across the sky? Every year we'd go into silly giggling fits because one of us couldn't resist pointing out that they looked like sperm. And as if that wasn't enough, then one of us would start talking about us getting pregnant from them raining down on us, and we'd absolutely shriek. But, you know…? There was something about talking about it like that that would leave us feeling soooo horny."

  Beside him, she sighed with nostalgia and with pleasure, as if it were every woman's obligation to dig down to the girl who still lived inside, in all her giddy abandon.

  "I haven't thought of that in…too long."

  There was no single moment when it was decided, just a spontaneous and mutual knowing: that whatever was taking place here tonight, they were not immune to it. He had to have her, here and now, and she him—no discussion, no risk of misread cues. The absolute conviction of it removed any possibility of guilt. It felt to him as certain as if it were written in the stars.

  Zippers were yanked and buttons undone, and as the night air hit his bared skin he understood how the rest could tolerate it—he felt hot enough for plumes of steam to rise from his hide. When she pulled him down to her on the blanket, pale as moonlight within the nest of her peeled clothing, that first fevered press of their bodies seared him from thighs to throat.

  His hands went high, sliding past her breasts and throat to bury themselves in her hair, and hers went low, cupping him through his unfastened pants, kneading him, as if to stop would mean to wither and die. He sought her mouth, found her tongue yearning to mate with his own.

  It had never been quite this way before—until now, just something that he had always suspected he'd been missing out on. Like cold water thrown onto a fire, the interruptions and disturbances had seemed inevitable before: a girlfriend's change of heart, a wife's swing of mood, the cries of the infant daughter he was only now ready to surrender to the water and earth that had reclaimed her.

  Now, finally, with this woman he barely knew, it felt like everything it was supposed to be: a torch blazing against the loneliest night, a denial shouted into the face of death.

  And then she pushed him off her—the same thing happening again? But no, something in her laughter assured him otherwise, that she'd only come up with even better ideas. She took him by the hand and straggled to her feet, and so did he, needing a moment to steady their knees, then he followed as she tugged him headlong through the dark.

  They navigated less by sight than by instinct and sound. Every several yards they came across the thrash and roll of anoth
er coupling, marked by moans emitted into the night, then these would fade to one side, then behind him, and once he thought surely his ears must have been playing tricks because some pair's impassioned guttural keening seemed to abruptly rise and fade above him. But her hand only tightened on his and he still had no idea where she was leading.

  As around them the dark spoke in cries and whispers, he thought of ancient rites he'd heard about that took place in wilder times, pagan times, couples spending a springtime night under the stars and making love upon the bare earth to awaken it, to remind it of its fertility and their continued reliance on it.

  Yet this could be nothing of the sort. Tonight, as autumn decayed into winter, they were as far from springtime as they could get, and the stars did not twinkle with approval, but burned and fell.

  When she stopped, eyes alight with glee, he couldn't see any reason why she would've brought him here, to the children's swingset—not until she tugged his flapping pants the rest of the way down and pushed him onto one of the swings.

  As he wrapped his fists around the icy chains, she cast off the rest of the clothes she'd been trailing ever since they fled the blanket, then stood before him, and she too grabbed the chains and hoisted herself off the ground. Her legs wrapped around him to lock behind his back as she lowered herself into his lap, and only when they were locked together there, too, did she release the chains and cling to his shoulders instead.

  When he first pushed off the ground to get them started, she breathed a gasp into his mouth, then sucked it back so fiercely he thought she was after his soul, but by now he could see no difference between what was his and what was hers.

  Back and forth, in ever-greater arcs, he rode the swing and she rode him, and he scarcely felt the wind at his back. There was only her, the radiant heat of her and the wet fire at her core. Momentum worked miracles, pulling her away along his shaft as the swing swooped back, then pushing him deeply into her again as they rushed forward and he would look past her shoulder to see only sky.